Career Update: George Clooney To Direct New Yorker Article-Turned-Movie, ‘The Yankee Comandante’

Career Update: George Clooney To Direct New Yorker Article-Turned-Movie, 'The Yankee Comandante'

Post-“The Descendants” and “The Ides of March,” George Clooney’s career continues to flourish. No surprise there.

Now Focus Features is in negotiations for the rights to David Grann’s epic New Yorker article “The Yankee Comandante” (which only published on May 28), with Clooney attached to direct, reports Deadline Hollywood. He would also serve as a producer on the film, with his Smokehouse partner Grant Heslov (“The Men Who Stare at Goats”).

The story is about shadowy American William Alexander Morgan, who aided Fidel Castro’s rebellion to overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista so much that after the Revolution, Castro gave Morgan the title Comandante. The only other foreigner to earn that status was Argentinian Che Guevara. But ever-paranoid, the Cubans clapped Morgan in prison as a U.S. spy, just as the FBI and CIA were trying to understand who this guy really was.

“The Yankee Comandante” adds to Clooney’s already impressive slate, including a producing credit on Ben Affleck’s “Argo,” which is getting good advance buzz and scheduled for an Oscar-friendly release of October 12. (Watch the trailer here.) And of course, Clooney co-stars with Sandra Bullock in Alfonso Cuaron’s 3 D space odyssey “Gravity,” the director’s first feature since “Children of Men” in 2006. The release date of the highly-anticipated film was recently pushed back to 2013.